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Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

  • 1.  Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 19, 2017 10:57

    Hello community members, and welcome to our first Ask Us Anything about Artificial Intelligence session on TM Forum Community! Today, our expert, @Brian Levy , will be available to answer any and all of your questions from now until 1 pm EST.

    Brian has been in the communications and broadcasting industry for more than 40 years. His experience includes being the Group Technology Officer of British Telecom, The Global CTO for HP for the Telecom and media sectors, The Software and the EMEA CTO for Juniper Networks and the EMEA CTO for Brocade Network, he also spent ten years in the BBC working in various roles developing the broadcast infrastructure and ten years working for AT&T in EMEA leading the role out of Frame Relay and AT&T's very first Internet backbone in EMEA.

    Please use this thread to post your questions, and Brian will respond as quickly as he can.  If he does not have an opportunity to respond to your question within the timeframe, we will follow up with you in the next week.

    We are very excited and Brian is ready to answer your questions about AI, so please post your question below.



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    Melanie DiGeorge
    Community Manager
    TM Forum
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  • 2.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:01
    Brian, what are your thoughts on Evolutionary Neural Networks where the system is allowed to try and evolve not just weights, but various topologies(number of layers, number of neurons, recurrent..),activation functions etc. to evolve a
    system best suited for a given problem.

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    Santhosh Sathiyaseelan
    Verizon Communications
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  • 3.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:03
    This is an emerging area of study and for simple data sets there have been reasonable results, however for more complex data sets this has not worked well and I see still a black art around converlutional network design for particular problems and also how the data epochs are configured during training to prevent overfiting etc. Nevertheless I am sure that progress will be made in self configuration of the networks themselves not just the weights by labled data sets etc. please see this paper.

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 4.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:05
    Do we really need AI? How to avoid AI ruling us?

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    Anuradha Udunuwara
    Sri Lanka Telecom PLC
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  • 5.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:28
    @Anuradha Udunuwara 

    This is a complex question, in the more general sense do we need Facebook and Social Media. I think the genie is out of the bag now with AI and there is no way to put it back , it is coming and it will be very hard to stop it. The changes that AI will make to society are profound – Self driving cars, Call Centers with no people, automated operations, automated doctors etc etc.

     

    It will be more disruptive to society than the industrial revolution, it can be for the good of society or the bad, that is our choice at the end of the day.

     

    For the telecommunications networks of the future AI will absolutely be needed to dive automation, however the effects on society of AI will be far more profound than this

     

    Can it be controlled, well I think the first question will be how can we avoid being too dependent on it.  Imagine a world of self drive cars, delivery vans etc and the system goes down..

     

    In the longer team it will very hard to understand the answers that AI delivers so working out how to control it may well be beyond our capacity



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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 6.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:09
    Do you believe that AI can one day substitute the human brain?

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    Denis Tokarevski
    AIST Limited
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  • 7.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:10
    In many areas AI systems can today exceed our human capabilities however the human brain is far more complex than the best AI systems today and has more overall capability, however over time AI systems will exceed our human capabilities I am sure, but will we understand what they tell us and will we be able to control them or will they control us by our dependency on them. Are they the next evolution who knows....

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 8.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:14
    How many percentiles of current AI commercial products' accuracy are there in the market that we can trust? If less than 50%?, how can we make it better into a near human interaction level?

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    Thammarat Limsawas
    IBM Corporation
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  • 9.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:17
    @Thammarat Limsawas​ AI systems can be very accurate in certain tasks where a great deal of training data exists and the problem is reasonably bounded. One example is the use of AI for the automatic tagging for pictures my Google, Microsoft and others. I could not give you the exact figures except to say they can categorise millions of picture in hours and not years to a greater accuracy that humans can

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 10.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:20
    Any REAL use case of AI in telecommunications world? I mean ,something more impacting than chat box

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    Raul Barranquero Simon
    TELEFONICA
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  • 11.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:22
    The best I have seen up to data is the use of unsupervised machine learning by dark trace take a look https://www.darktrace.com/

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 12.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Feb 04, 2019 15:47

    Several examples of applied AI from my telecom implementations from early 2000's:
    (1) Pro-active disclosing/alerting problems (system was able to predict failures when people saw everything ok),
    (2) Automated fixing problems,
    (3) Consulting expert for technicians in the field,
    (4) Automated programming for new devices after expanding HW infrastructure,
    (5) OL 3D visualization of operation with contextual automated point of view positioning,
    (6) Automated adviser recommending topics of interests for NOC,
    (7) Recognition of threats in the network,
    (8) Emergency operation despite of failed parts by means of learned estimated behavior...
    (9) Ex-post fixing consequences of failures,
    (10) Dynamic distribution of computing power under attacks and other emergency situations...



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    Leos Tovarek, Ph.D.
    UNSPECIFIED
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  • 13.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Feb 06, 2019 09:27
    I'm working for Inbox and our mission is to enable MNOs to offer the best customer experience to each subscriber through individual decision powered by ML and AI.

    So yes there are some "real life" use cases powered by ML and AI that have delivered incremental value to MNOs (in Northern America, Middle East, Africa and APAC with our customers).  We nevertheless believe that AI marketing needs to be supervised by Humans.

    Our value proposition is based on 3 main pillars:
    1. Deterministic Marketing to analyze behavioral data (data science as a service)
    2. Predictive Marketing to create and industrialize scores (predicitons with self-learning algorithms for the marketers through a user friendly UI)
    3. Individualized Marketing to offer subscribers the best digital experience (NBO engine to identify the best combination  between targeted offer and  communication channel)

    I'd be happy to share our latest white paper "How should AI be integrated to create hyper-personalization in telecom?".
    Drop me a mail at tdemolliens@inbox.fr if interested. We'll be at MWC for those you'd interested in meeting us and hearing about our success stories.

    Best regards,
    Thomas Demolliens
    Inbox Group


  • 14.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:25

    1: It is possible to have some recommendation about cognitive platforms about unstructured text profiling and also about image recognition?

    2: Is possible to share some use cases list, or some catalysts projects running, of AI application different from "the classical" Customer care bot?



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    Andrea Cerritelli
    FASTWEB
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  • 15.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:49
    ​​@Andrea Cerritelli

    It is difficult to give specific recommendations here as there are so many companies in this emerging field. Artificial Solutions http://www.artificial-solutions.com/ are a leading company in the area of natural  language interaction (NLI). They have a system that can converse in 35 languages

     

    We can follow-up on the catalysts, however there are three application areas that I believe will be of most interest to service providers

     

    1. Customer experience
    2. Service management and optimisation
    3. Network Management and Optimisation

     

    Check out this great paper on the Knowledge Defined Network for something more inspiring than Chatbots

     

    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.06222.pdf



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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 16.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:33
    What is the concrete use case for AI in carriers?

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    Mujin Liu
    Hewlett-Packard Enterprise
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  • 17.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:36
    @Mujin Liu I think there are three key areas
    1. Customer Experience
    2. Service management and optimisation
    3. Network management and optimisation

    Use cases are still being developed in all these areas, which is the best depends very much on the specific issues

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 18.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:41
    What kind of data environment is ideal for AI to leverage? Inferring from completely unstructured data provides a probabilistic result, but big data lakes in practice tend to be big data swamps.

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    Dave Duggal
    Managing Director
    EnterpriseWeb
    dave@enterpriseweb.com
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  • 19.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:43
    One of the great things about unsupervised machine learning is the way it is able to look for patterns in data and spot things that humans miss. There are algorithms out there like K-Means see http://home.deib.polimi.it/matteucc/Clustering/tutorial_html/kmeans.html


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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 20.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:45
    What are the most valuable use cases that AI can be used for telecom operators, and what challenges are there to realize these use cases?

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    Baolei Xu
    Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd
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  • 21.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:47
    @Baolei Xu I think there are three key areas

    1. Customer Experience
    2. Service management and optimisation
    3. Network management and optimisation

    I see the biggest challenge will be connecting the AI ecosystem of players to them so as to gain maximum advantage from the innovation being generated. Some SPs are developing their own AI systems but few have the expertise required


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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 22.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:52
    How do you see the role of TMForum in relation to AI?

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    Michel Besson , PhD
    Lead Architect
    TM Forum
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  • 23.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:12
    @Michel Besson

    I believe that the TM Forum has a big role to play for our industry. The new ODA (Open Digital Architecture) under discussion in the forum has the aim of making our future OSS and BSS integrated architecture AI Ready

    There are three KEY requirements for this

    1. Having a holistic data architecture across BSS and OSS to which AI systems can plug in
    2. Being able to receive intent messages from AI systems in a consistent way and to federate that Intent to all layers of the model so that it could control customer interaction, Service interaction or Network Interaction etc.
    3. Having a BSS and OSS architecture capable of being controlled much faster that than that of today with a human controlled management system

    Secondly we need to help connect the AI ecosystem of companies to address the communications industry.

    In simple terms we can define how AI would connect in a consistent way to BSS and OSS of the future and then enable innovative AI companies to develop applications that would plug in to this, creating a platform for them to sell into our industry and add value to our service provider members



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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 24.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 19, 2017 11:58
    What are the current industry trends in building Emotional Intelligence into machines?

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    Saurabh Gupta
    Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd
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  • 25.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:03
    @Saurabh Gupta
    This is in fact the next horizon for many machine learning systems for example it is planned for Amazon's Alexa to detect the emotion in your voice soon and to modify responses accordingly. It will also get personal as it starts to recoginise individual voices. I can see in the future AI driven person companions for the elderly etc. and may more uses, some scary...

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 26.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:15
    How can we control/regulate research in this field to avoid catastrophic outcome, is it even possible for that to be regulated ??

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    Abdulrahman Alzayyaty

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  • 27.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:19
    That is a difficult question, AI will change our lives and the lives of our children dramatically, my immediate concern is about our dependence on it which will become extreme in my view. Imagine a world of self drive cars and the system down. Automated food production that stops etc. etc. In the past we had a more resilient society in many ways.... The dangers for the future are many such as AI warfare, killing machines of the SI-Fi world becoming a reality...its down to the good folks in society to control, are we as mankind ready for this challenge ?

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 28.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:29
    I have 12+ years of IT experience. Started as a Oracle PL/SQL developer and now from last 2 years I am working as an OSS Component Designer [Associate Business Consultant].

    My question is, how AI will help me or change the way I work?

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    Praveen V
    Tech Mahindra Limited
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  • 29.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:30
    In the first instance it could change your work, there are lots of opportunites for data scientists and programmers in the emerging world of AI... do not get left behind

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 30.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:32
    Are there any safeguards being discussed to address or prevent AI from learning and taking actions based on inaccurate or intentionally inaccurate data? Is it conceivable that an AI could evaluate the veracity of information before taking it into account, and would this even be desirable?

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    Tom Flynn
    Neural Technologies
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  • 31.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:35
    @Tom Flynn
    This is a significant problem, we have seen AI systems being taken down for exactly this reason. There are companies now that offer data cleaning services for training data. What is needed is domain knowledge and to build in some governing values. On what basis does an AI system evaluate the truth of data, this is a complex question, how do we evaluate fake news...not that well...lets hope an AI system can do better?

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 32.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:39
    For our industry, where quality is measured in PPM and 'always on' is a non-negotiable service expectation, what are the control mechanisms being designed to ensure AI-enabled network management guarantees improved received customer experiences?

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    Richard Goldsworthy
    Telstra Corporation
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  • 33.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:43
    @Richard Goldsworthy Today the effectiveness of AI systems are measured by humans. Many AI systems are closed loop and are trying to constantly improve, however in the wider context the technology needs further development

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 34.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:46
    As a process consultant, I am more driven by Governance processes around any new IT trend. AI is relatively a new kid in the block, though old enough for some institutes. What are the Governance Mechanisms and Bodies which control the AI at this point in time? To avoid any scare (as we see in the movies :) ), how it is being governed? What are the rule engines in place as we speak and what is changing in these mechanisms for adopting the rapid growth and AI applicability across the World?

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    Sridhar Kuppurao
    Infosys Ltd.
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  • 35.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:49
    I do not know of any controls on AI directly at this point. There are controls on data usage and access such a GDPR however these do not stipulate AI access.... as usual lawmaking is behind technology development

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 36.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:52
    How can AI change the thinking of leader of 100% state-own Telco company in the fields of Human Resource Management, Risk Management, and Change Management

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    Bui Manh Hung
    Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT)
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  • 37.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:55
    I am sure it will impact all these areas, and hopefully getting positive results

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 38.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 12:57
    How can we take care of security issues in AI?

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    Charuka Kaluarachchi
    N-able (Pvt) Ltd
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  • 39.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 13:00
    That is a complex question. Maybe in the future AI will defend itself... which could lead to some difficult situations

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 40.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 13:00
    Most of the AI machine learning also requires significant amount of data for creating a learning model. Telecom has the availability of that mammoth data but I have not heard any Telco deploying a BOT for responding on customer care help desk or IVR portal or any of the customer interaction point. Is that the transformation customer experience using AI not their cup of tea? Still seems they are submerged into their operational and tactical fight while OTT are changing the industry landscape.

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    Krishna Basudevan
    Rankone Consulting Pvt Ltd
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  • 41.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Oct 19, 2017 13:01
    Some Telco's are actually deploying chat bots see this from Vodafone https://blog.vodafone.co.uk/2017/04/12/meet-tobi-chatbot-latest-addition-vodafone-uks-customer-service-team/
    But it is early days for all this, I see three key initial areas for AI; Customer Experience, Service management & optimisation, and Network management and optimisation.

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    Brian Levy
    TM Forum
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  • 42.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 20, 2017 08:44
    Thank you everyone for your thoughtful questions!  I also wanted to thank Brian for taking the time to to host this Ask the Expert Session.  We look forward to hosting similar sessions on the community in the coming months.  If there is a particular topic you'd like to see - please let me know.

    Additionally, continue the AI discussion ​with speakers Kevin Tsai, of Google and Shelley Schueter, of Nokia at Innovation InFocus in Dallas November 7-8, 2017.

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    Melanie DiGeorge
    Community Manager
    TM Forum
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  • 43.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Apr 03, 2018 11:55

    Have you registered for the Explore AI Action Days?

    Thursday, April 12, 2018 from 9:00am to Friday, April 13, 2018 from 4:00pm

    Artificial Intelligence systems are being developed and deployed to address a wide range of business and technical challenges, with intensive research and development helping to drive rapid progress and adoption. Companies investing in developing these solutions to efficiently address the needs of CSPs will need standards in place for guidance on how these systems will interact. The requirement to customize and maintain individual solutions for individual CSPs could be a major barrier for many AI companies addressing this market, so they may decide to focus on addressing other application areas such as Fintech or medical applications, which could offer an easier path to revenue generation.

    These two action days are open to all to explore the possibility of AI in telecoms and determine a roadmap of challenges.

    Agenda:

    Day 1 Building the Plan:

    • 9.00-9.30: Welcome, introductions, and statement of ambitions
    • 9.30-11.00: Brainstorm challenge areas and specifics
    • 11.00-12.00: Team breakouts – assess, prioritize key components and opportunities
    • 12.00-12.30: Team feedback to the group
    • 12.30-14.00: Lunch
    • 14.00-16.00: Review Workstream prioritization, commitment, and way forward
    • 16.00-17.00: Catalyst showcase themes, proposals that drive the value of the program

    Day 2 Testing the Plan:

    • 9.00-11.30: Scenario Planning Workshop: AI business scenarios
    • 11.30-12.00: Team breakouts – prioritize AI Value propositions that the Forum can effectively support
    • 12.00-12.30: Team feedback to group
    • 12.30-14.00: Lunch
    • 14.00-15.00: Contributions and commitments – what contributions can be made to support work and face to face meetings
    • 15.00-16.00: Action plan

    Location: San Ramon (AT&T)
    AT&T
    5001 Executive Pkwy
    San Ramon
    CA 94583
    USA.
    View map



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    Derek Flexer
    TM Forum
    Collaboration Operations Director
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  • 44.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Feb 05, 2019 06:12
    I am a bit puzzled about this whole discussion or Q&A. 
    Is it really so that AI is the answer (what was the question)?

    I think I have mentioned this in other discussions, ref. Aristotle the greek scientist and philosopher. There are things in the world that cannot be other than what they are, like dropping a stone, it will always fall towards the ground. The things must be observed and their behaviour recorded and understood, That is science. Aristotle also said: there are things in the world that can be other than what they are. We must not use observation from the former to guide us in the latter, that will not work. AI act on past data on a digital (yes/no) basis. AI do not have human senses, smell, sight, nerves, hearing etc. AI is more like our education system - memorise and repeat. Customers' experiences are not based on network quality alone. Cx is based on the correlation and aggregation of senses experienced in the ecosystem during events or series of action towards and end point and measured against expectation. it is even more complex as expectation is a moving thing/target and may change during the process.

    My layman opinion: AI, for the time being can probably replace humans when it comes to memorise and repeat scenarios, but innovation and creativity and human erratic behaviours based on emotions and irrational is far away for AI.

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    Cato Rasmussen
    Independent
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  • 45.  RE: Ask The Expert about Artificial Intelligence! Post your question here

    Posted Feb 06, 2019 06:40

    Instead of mathematical deduction of a problem statement, one need to leverage neutral networks, which are a set of algorithms, modeled loosely after the human brain (the way biological nervous systems work), that are designed to recognize patterns.

     

    Neural networks like people, learn by example. They cannot be programmed to perform a specific task.

     

    Neural networks, have ability to derive meaning from complicated or imprecise data, can be used to extract patterns and detect trends that are too complex to be noticed by either humans or other computer techniques.



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    syed javed
    Oracle Corporation
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